Three-parent babies now legal as peers back pioneering technique

The UK has become the first country in the world to legalise the creation of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) babies using DNA from three people after peers overwhelmingly backed the proposals.
The UK would become the first country in the world to allow creation of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) babies using DNA from three different people.The UK would become the first country in the world to allow creation of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) babies using DNA from three different people.
The UK would become the first country in the world to allow creation of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) babies using DNA from three different people.

The House of Lords last night voted by 280 to 48, majority 232, on a free vote to throw out a move to block regulations introducing mitochondrial donation techniques after an impassioned debate lasting nearly four hours.

MPs, including all three main party leaders, voted earlier this month in the Commons in support of the pioneering techniques, which will now be legalised following Lords approval.

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Health minister Earl Howe said it would be “cruel and perverse” to deny for any longer than was necessary the chance of some women who carry serious inherited diseases to have healthy children.

Tory former Cabinet minister John Gummer, known in the Lords as Lord Deben, put forward a motion rejecting the move until a joint committee of MPs and peers had reported on safety procedures, but his plan was rejected in the vote.

The regulations themselves were then nodded through by peers moments later.

Opponents, including church leaders and pro-life groups, have warned that the change will create “three parent families” and has been brought about too hastily.

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But Lord Howe said the move to permit the controversial procedures, aimed at preventing serious inherited, mitochondrial diseases, offered “real hope” to families.

“My own position, shared by ministerial colleagues, is very simple,” he told a packed chamber.

“Families can see the technology is there to help them and are keen to take it up. It would be cruel and perverse in my judgment to deny them that opportunity for any longer than absolutely necessary.”

Lord Howe said the purpose of the regulations was to enable women to have their own genetic children free of “terrible disease” caused by disorders in their mitochondrial DNA.

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The regulations did so by allowing “healthy mitochondria” from a donor to replace the “unhealthy mitochondria” in a woman’s egg or embryo, he told peers.

And he said the techniques offered the only hope for some women to have healthy genetically-related children “who will not suffer from the devastating and often fatal consequences of serious mitochondrial disease”.

Lord Howe said the Government was clear it was acting within EU law and the legislation was “sound and robust”.

The regulations allow the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to consider the procedure for women carrying mitochondrial disease. Lord Deben argued it had not yet been proved the techniques were safe and there was uncertainty about their legality.

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“If we talked about transferring the spindle from one egg to another I would not have any ethical objection - in fact I would want to support it,” he said. “There are real doubts about safety.”

He told peers he supported genetically modified crops and said: “The testing and the science is to me clear.

“If the testing and the science in this case was as clear, as complete and as total, I believe I would be able to vote for one of these two proposals, but it isn’t.”

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